Book Review: The Unmade Bed: The Messy Truth about Men and Women in the 21st Century (2017). Stephen Marche (with commentary by his wife, Editor Sarah Fulford).

The author of this entertaining and compelling account of contemporary marriage and relationships between the sexes was a tenured professor and author at a New York university a few years ago, when his wife was offered a prestigious position as the editor of a major periodical back in their home country of Canada. 

 

From this initially difficult situation for him, where he agreed to put her career first, leave his desirable  academic position and move with her and their family back to Toronto, where he would take on primary responsibility for caring for their small children, Marche explores the reality of our current lives, loves and families, and how men and women (at least in Western society) balance the competing demands of professional lives, raising children, maintaining households and divvying up all the necessary chores and responsibilities.

 

Moving effortlessly between social science research on changing male and female roles, and his own family’s experiences and emotional responses to them, he challenges the post-feminist concept of a “war between the sexes”, a zero-sum approach that assumes that any improvements to women’s condition has to come at the expense of men’s happiness, satisfaction or status.  Instead, he argues that we are moving toward a time where the improving status and condition of women, and their increasing ability to live fuller lives that can include work, home and family, actually improves the emotional fulfillment of men’s lives and of the whole family too.

 

But of course, it’s always complicated.  It’s a dance, and both participants have to commit to it.  So he explores the dynamics of this dance within his own family, and tells a story of life in a modern family that is both endearing and familiar.  And his story is further improved by the fact that his wife, the editor,  periodically injects her own often amusing observations as footnotes to the same topics and events he’s recounting, to provide a woman’s perspective on their shared experiences and sometimes differing reactions.

 

A very enjoyable account and analysis of modern marriage, families and love, that will ring true to many readers who have their own experiences of the same range of common challenges, issues, joys and satisfactions.  Highly recommended.